Piety as spiritual poverty.

BY KIRSTIE SKOGERBOE

A few weeks ago, my husband called me on the phone only minutes after leaving our apartment. A Venezuelan family—dad, pregnant mom, and 11- or 12-year-old son—was asking for help with a sign at the stoplight nearest our house. He had spoken with them briefly as he waited out a red light on his way to school, and he told me that they seemed kind. He asked if I would bring them our leftover lunch.

I’m a homebody and introvert, so it took some self-hype and prayer to muster up the courage to walk to this family and introduce myself. (The prayer, I think, was more influential.) I packed a backpack with cold spaghetti, some apples, granola bars, a bilingual Jesus Storybook Bible, and (at the last second) one of my two jars of prenatal vitamins.

With my puppy in tow, I made my way to the train stop and squatted down alongside the mother and son at the base of the light pole. The boy’s eyes lit up at the sight of Willa, my dog, and I immediately set her in his gentle arms. The mom looked tired, but also perseverant. They’d been in the States for a week, she told me, and on this median for a few hours, looking for money and work. I unloaded the snacks and Bible, and I offered her the prenatals. “I just ran out of mine!” she said. We chatted a little longer and asked God for housing, work, and protection for the baby. Then, I walked back to my two-room apartment—to heating and furniture and prenatal appointment reminders on my wall calendar.

I wouldn’t trade, I thought.

It’s tempting for me to think the same way about spiritual life. I’m embarrassed to remember how many times I’ve thought I was better than another Christian because I didn’t sin so blatantly, or because I had prayed for 15 whole minutes that morning, or because I had found fulfillment in a book of the Bible that somebody else found boring. I think that way often. There’s a well-worn groove in my mind for subliminal beliefs about how God likes it more when I get better at piety than when I trip up and ask him for help. I want a fully furnished spiritual apartment, not a panhandling spot on the median exposed to the wind. I wouldn’t trade with beggars.

But the Word shows us that piety is begging. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus says, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). David prayed, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17). When the Pharisee and the tax collector pray in the temple, the man who beats his breast in sorrow and petition is the one who is justified (Luke 18:14). And what do the beggars say who call to Jesus on the street? “Kyrie eleison,” which translates, “Lord, have mercy” (Matthew 20:30–31). Piety is acknowledging more and more readily until we die that we cannot meet our own needs, that every spiritual blessing comes from God, and that we are most blessed when we are most dependent on Christ.

Let your heart rest on the median with Jesus. Let him love you with his free gifts. At the moment you think you’ve run out of what you need, he will give you himself.

Skogerboe, the digital communications coordinator for the AFLC, lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.